Hundreds of whale sharks like this one are slaughtered at the factory every year. (AP Photo/University of Southern Mississippi Gulf Coast Research Laboratory, Eric Hoffmayer)

(Newser)
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Huge numbers of sharks from endangered species are being slaughtered and turned into products including health supplements at a giant slaughterhouse in China, a conservation group has discovered. Investigators from WildLifeRisk found that more than 600 whale sharks are slaughtered at the factory every year, along with large numbers of other sharks from threatened species including great whites, the South China Morning Post reports.

The sharks, caught as far away as Mexico, are used for fish oils sold in countries including the US and Canada. "We went there three times in the past three years and each time the scale of the slaughter was truly staggering," the conservation group's directors wrote in a report. "It's even more incredible that this carnage is all for the sake of non-essential lifestyle props, such as lipsticks, face creams, health supplements, and shark's fin soup." The group has called on Chinese authorities to close the factory and investigate the company behind it. (In more positive shark-related news, an extinct shark has been found—at a fishmarket.)

chinese people are the most vile filth on the planet. I cut my one and only trip to China short because watching children squat and defecate in the streets while their parents cackled in a language that resembles the sounds of regurgitation. The corpses of any and every animal one could imagine were strung up in filthy shop windows or ground up into a powder were displayed endlessly and shamelessly. The chinese spit ... man woman child, spit hacking spit phlegm spit spit cough spit. It's no wonder that the most virulent respiratory viruses are churned out of china at a rate faster than the cheapest pirated merchandise ever available. Let's just pray that the chinese will spit into creation a particularly nasty virus that wipes them all out.

iq145

Apr 5, 2014 1:21 AM CDT

Destroying the Ocean's ecology has the potential to kill a lot of people. Personally i dont have a problem with people eating meat. Eating the meat of endangered species is a totally different issue (no matter from the ocean or the land). There are some that think nothing of completely wiping out whole species for profit. We've seen it in modern recorded history, like the dodo. Whales and tunas and sharks and even some common species have been targeted, and have taken HUGE losses

scruffthemuff

Jan 31, 2014 4:09 PM CST

Since Obama has such a good relationship with China, perhaps he can draw a red line with China too and stop all this slaughtering. After all they are our friends like Syria, Russia, and Iran.